The Twitter feed for Erik Todd Dellums has clues from the voice actor that seem to reveal plans for Fallout 4 or some other future installment in the Fallout post-apocalyptic RPG series. This tweet suggests we can expect a return of Three Dog, his DJ character from the game: "To all my #Fallout3 and #ThreeDog fans: There may be more of the Dog coming! Fingers crossed!" A subsequent tweet says he has been authorized to blab like this: "How was that for a tease! I was given permission to release that tease, so fingers crossed." Thanks VGU via No Mutants Allowed.

A large part of this discussion has revolved around the writing and the graphics and the quest lines... am I the only one that is completely turned off by their "everything levels with you" system, or the gunplay/combat in general?

There is rarely ever any real danger, or areas that you have to completely avoid. FO:NV "seemed" to be moving in the right direction with some really dangerous areas to avoid (more so due to the annoyance of fighting 5 deathclaws at once, not that the combat is any good anyway), but then Skyrim was a complete step backwards. It took the same number of hits to kill dragons at level 5 that it did at level 50+. The same thing happens in the FO games, where enemy health and your damage all seemingly scale at the same rate, giving you the same exact boring gameplay from level 1 through the end of the game.

The entire "level up skills as you use them" inevitably results in boring jack-of-all-trades characters. Isn't his why everyone killed Diablo 3? Because the character progression was a joke? Well, i submit that player progression in Bethesda RPG's (from Oblivion on) is a complete joke too.

Heck, FO:NV was so broken that all you had to do was use a sniper rifle and a shotgun. There was almost no reason to use anything else. Neither FO3 or NV had any reason to use the big guns, like the fatboy or whatever... they were mainly just there for the "wow" factor.

Their combat and progression systems play much better in the fantasy setting. I'm sure the VATS system works really well and is probably necessary for anyone to play the game with a gamepad... but who ever presses that button on the PC? It's entirely too easy to headshot everything in these games already, and the lack of variety in enemy types is just depressing. hey look it's mob x, I better shoot it in the head. Even Borderlands, which I HATE... had different critical areas of enemy mobs to aim for.

So, I'm not excited for Fallout 4 at all, unless they are going to seriously re-vamp some gameplay systems they have not changed in 4-5 games now.

Indeed. Mass Effect 2 felt like a new game, despite the similarities of the engine. The graphics were improved, the gameplay was improved, the narrative was much better delivered, etc. I haven't played ME3 as it wasn't released on Steam, but it looks like an improvement again. It was the same with STALKER: Clear Sky, which (despite its faults) introduced improved graphics, new gameplay mechanics and a more focused narrative - unfortunately CoP took a backwards step with graphics, with a massive gameworld that didn't really have any personality.

ME2 was essentially ME1 with a simplified skill tree and loot system and improved combat. If that's enough to qualify as a sequel, then FNV certainly qualifies as one too.

Significant additions/improvements in FNV over FO3:- Faction system- Hardcore mode with needs system- Significantly expanded crafting system- New skills- Traits system- Overhauled perks system with new perks- New enemies and factions- Tons of new weapons, armor and items- Vastly superior writing- Iron sights- Much more developed companions with their own unique questlines and bonus perks- Open-ended quests with branching paths and equally viable combat, diplomacy and stealth solutions.- New damage threshold system for armor.

No, it boils down to enjoyability. I liked TW2 for the narrative and for the environments, which had a very distinctive feel, much more than the combat. It's the same with Oblivion and Skyrim - they have very compelling gameworlds and strong writing, even if the RPG elements were very light. I'm sure they would have been even better if you could meaningfully influence the gameworld but they were compelling games that I enjoyed playing. NV just didn't have that. The engine was clunky, the gameplay tedious (after having completed F3), the game world wasn't interesting (to me it wasn't as compelling as F3) and I just didn't enjoy it - the entire game was hugely dated in comparison to what the rest of the industry was doing.

Very strange. Firstly, how did Oblivion or Skyrim have strong writing? The quests, characters and dialogue were utterly forgettable in both games. The books were mostly well-written but that's about it. You stress the importance of strong writing and compelling, immersive gameworlds, but FNV was superior in both regards compared to FO3 or any Bethesda RPG. How far did you actually get in FNV? Did you meet any companions? Did you make it to New Vegas? From what you've said, it sounds like you didn't make it past the starting town.

FNV's gameplay is clunky and the presentation is very much outdated but if strong writing and compelling gameworlds (a result of strong writing) are your top priorities, you really should give it another try.

ItBurn wrote on Jan 10, 2013, 14:45:I'm classifying Clear Skies as an expansion. It was basically the same game, with a different story, factions and some features. I mean, it had the same game world. Call of Prypiat is a sequel though. Very different.

You don't tend to get major engine upgrades in an expansion, nor do you get major new gameplay mechanics like factions and major inventory improvements. At the same time CS certainly wasn't a sequel in its own right. Whereas CoP was more of an expansion and in fact regressed in the graphics department (to improve performance, as CS was pretty brutal).

I'm classifying Clear Skies as an expansion. It was basically the same game, with a different story, factions and some features. I mean, it had the same game world. Call of Prypiat is a sequel though. Very different.

Mass Effect 2 is a better game overall, but I liked the loot system a LOT more in Mass Effect 1. I also liked the fact that Mass Effect 1 had exploration, which was mostly lacking in 2.

ItBurn wrote on Jan 10, 2013, 07:49:To balance things out. I too found NV to be more like an expansion. Same assets, gameplay and barely any new feature. It's basically the exact same thing, except with new locations and a new story and some slightly more polished mechanics.

I understand that it stands on it's own, that it's more faithful to the originals, blah blah blah. Still feels like an expansion.

The Mass Effect games didn't feel like expansions. They changed more things. Mass Effect 1 is very different from Mass Effect 3.

Indeed. Mass Effect 2 felt like a new game, despite the similarities of the engine. The graphics were improved, the gameplay was improved, the narrative was much better delivered, etc. I haven't played ME3 as it wasn't released on Steam, but it looks like an improvement again. It was the same with STALKER: Clear Sky, which (despite its faults) introduced improved graphics, new gameplay mechanics and a more focused narrative - unfortunately CoP took a backwards step with graphics, with a massive gameworld that didn't really have any personality.

Jerykk wrote on Jan 9, 2013, 23:22:I'm guessing you'd never play FO1 or FO2, given their dated engines.

I didn't play them at the time and I don't enjoy playing must very old games, so I have no intention of going back to them. My opinion of F3 and NV was based on me not knowing anything about the previous games, just like 90% of people who played them. You constantly bash Bethesda games but I enjoy them and clearly a lot of other people do too.

Jerykk wrote on Jan 9, 2013, 23:22:So it basically boils to presentation. I'm guessing you'd never play FO1 or FO2, given their dated engines. Making meaningful and interesting choices is gameplay and the most important gameplay in an RPG. FNV excels in offering meaningful and interesting choices. Witcher 2 has a lot of interesting choices too, but not as many as FNV. Skyrim doesn't really have any. As with any Bethesda game, the main appeal of Skyrim is exploration and dungeon crawling. If by "gameplay" you actually mean "combat," then yes, the combat in Witcher 2 is better than the combat in FNV. However, the best RPGs make combat just one of many viable ways to play through the game (like in FNV). As for Skyrim, the combat's terrible.

No, it boils down to enjoyability. I liked TW2 for the narrative and for the environments, which had a very distinctive feel, much more than the combat. It's the same with Oblivion and Skyrim - they have very compelling gameworlds and strong writing, even if the RPG elements were very light. I'm sure they would have been even better if you could meaningfully influence the gameworld but they were compelling games that I enjoyed playing. NV just didn't have that. The engine was clunky, the gameplay tedious (after having completed F3), the game world wasn't interesting (to me it wasn't as compelling as F3) and I just didn't enjoy it - the entire game was hugely dated in comparison to what the rest of the industry was doing.

Immersion is very important to me and that's why I rate games like Far Cry 2 / 3, Skyrim, The Witcher 2, Dishonored, etc, so highly. F3 was pretty poor gameplay but the game world was very engaging and that was enough for me to complete it. If NV had been released instead of F3 it's possible I would have enjoyed it more but that's not how it was.

Ironsights, factions, huge amount of original quests, a huge amount of new art assets, environmental variety, etc. NV had a ton of that stuff, how far did you get into the game? It was more sequel than expansion pack. I don't know how anyone can say otherwise, go play the games side by side.

The Mass Effect games didn't feel like expansions. They changed more things. Mass Effect 1 is very different from Mass Effect 3

In many ways ME3 is still the clumsy TPS that ME1 was, just with less RPG elements and smaller levels. One can make the same comparison you did while only examining surface elements and not really going in depth.

I never said that it WAS an expansion, but it felt like it to me, and no matter how much you don't like it, you can't change how I felt about it. :p I still loved it, played it for 74 hours and thought that it was fully worth my 60$.

Ironsights, factions, huge amount of original quests, a huge amount of new art assets, environmental variety, etc. NV had a ton of that stuff, how far did you get into the game? It was more sequel than expansion pack. I don't know how anyone can say otherwise, go play the games side by side.

The Mass Effect games didn't feel like expansions. They changed more things. Mass Effect 1 is very different from Mass Effect 3

In many ways ME3 is still the clumsy TPS that ME1 was, just with less RPG elements and smaller levels. One can make the same comparison you did while only examining surface elements and not really going in depth.

To balance things out. I too found NV to be more like an expansion. Same assets, gameplay and barely any new feature. It's basically the exact same thing, except with new locations and a new story and some slightly more polished mechanics.

I understand that it stands on it's own, that it's more faithful to the originals, blah blah blah. Still feels like an expansion.

The Mass Effect games didn't feel like expansions. They changed more things. Mass Effect 1 is very different from Mass Effect 3.

I liked F3 better in almost every way. Perhaps it's because I didn't like the original games. I understand that that can annoy you, I know it annoys me that EA has completely changed Need For Speed into something I don't like because the original games didn't sell enough...

TurdFergasun wrote on Jan 9, 2013, 11:30:Fo3 was a much more enticing environment to explore, and had memorable characters, as apposed to NV were i can't remember a single character or dialogue sequence. Republic of dave, uncle leo, three dog, and the music he spammed is still on a cd i play on a semi regular basis, with lots of dry humor that didn't need to slap you over the head with the punchline. Side quests were compelling, and rewarded exploration, and mission progress. NV just seemed like quantity>quality. Couldn't be bothered to get more than 1/2 way through. I'd compare fo3 to a witty british sitcom vs the average holywood cookie cutter show with the same jokes told with different faces over and over so no demographic feels left out.

Or you know, the exact opposite. FO3 had tons of empty Dungeons, I mean Subways to "explore". Characters were so weird and Krazyyyyy!!!, because that's obvious how you make good characters. SHUT THE FUCK UP 3DAWG. The 'humor' was juvenile and childish. Side quests rewarded slogging through indistinguishable locations, because that's what Beth's games are- Dungeon Crawlers. NV has depth of narrative. FO3 is the same as other Beth games- a two inch deep ocean with depth of NOTHING.

To summarize, you're a bad person and your dog hates you.

so what specifically do you remember from NV that made it so great, other than these generic terms you're throwing out? you sound like balmer describing every product he's ever released.

to summarize i am a bad person, and my cat has a taste for man flesh, hide while you can.

NV was better because of:

The world. NV had a realized world/region. Everything was believable, in the context of a universe where radiation causes deathclaws and mutants. You didn't have two guys shacking up under a highway with only Nuka-Cola to eat/drink (because hahaha isn't that funny and weird?). There were farms, water treatment facilities, politics, logic.

The quests. You had an impact. Characters and towns thrived/died due to your actions. More quests could be solved in multiple ways, not just a few that were shown over and over in magazine previews. The multiple quests solutions also made sense, and weren't just extremes made for shock value.

The characterizations. Just as everything else, characters were more believable. That's pretty much all down to far better dialogue, through which personalities were displayed. Caesar was amiable enough to talk to even if his ideas were never going to work for a society. On the other hand, the NCR was the obvious 'good guys', they did suffer from all the problems of bureaucracy and corruption that might eventually lead to a WW4. The motivations for all the factions made sense and weren't Black & White.

The plot. It was mature, and didn't have a dozen extremely obviously plot holes.

3Dawg. It didn't have 3Dawg. Shut the fuck up, 3Dawg.

Endings. It had actually endings showing the consequences of your actions.

PropheT wrote on Jan 9, 2013, 12:52:

Zyrxil wrote on Jan 9, 2013, 12:06:NV has depth of narrative.

...Which was what, again? The story in NV was forgettable. So forgettable, in fact, that I'm sitting here trying to remember the narrative in the game and I can't. There's a guy who shot you, and you're trying to find him and kill him. You do that, predictably, and find out there's some factions who don't like each other. If bugs don't derail everything you do for them, there's an ending that happens.

Fallout 3's narrative was trying to find your father, chasing his trail elsewhere, finally finding him and then things go poorly. You take on the classic enemies of the Fallout franchise on a one-way path toward the end, where there's a pretty amazing battle with a giant patriot robot. There's Brotherhood of Steel, Deathclaws, Enclave, Super Mutants, and so on and they don't feel like just references to the series like in NV. The ending sucked, but they fixed it with DLC.

There really wasn't anything in NV that was great that wasn't just taken directly from Fallout 3. The new gameplay changes were done better in mods, the story was flat and uninteresting, and it was so buggy that it was almost impossible to finish.

What the hell are you talking about? The story of FO3 is a bunch of people racing to turn on a water machine that wouldn't produce a tactical advantage regardless of who turned it on. The impetus is your father having a midlife crisis and suddenly deciding to fix the machine, and incidentally no one ever thought about maybe getting the GECK briefcase before he did.

NV is the story of a political struggle, with your having been shot in the head serving as the motivation for finding out why your package was so important and how its purpose was to tilt the balance of power of the entire region. You become the kingmaker, and nothing is done by rule of cool. Yes fuck your inner 12 year old, and fuck your giant robots and 3 story tall Super Orcs. This isn't Bulletstorm.

Well said. Also one other thing that needs mentioning. F:NV 'feels' much more like a proper sequel to Fallout2. I felt as if I played in the same living breathing world.

Fallout 3 was disappointing. The biggest issues for me were the forgettable characters & cliched writing, being able to easily max all skills instead of having to make character development choices, and the 'stealth' working as a combat god mode like Oblivion. I also hated how DC was designed as dozens of little areas hemmed in by rubble that you can't climb over or clear.

New Vegas wasn't perfect but it actually felt like a Fallout game by comparison.

Broken Steel doesn't really make the ending all that much better. Unlike FNV, which provides a detailed account of how your actions affected the major characters and factions, FO3's ending essentially just tells you if you were nice or mean. It was pretty worthless.

Make no mistake, I appreciate that Bethesda resurrected the IP. I even enjoyed FO3 despite the horrible writing. But to claim that FO3 was better than FNV or that FNV was just an expansion pack is ridiculous.

Zyrxil wrote on Jan 9, 2013, 19:31:That misses the point. It's not that you can't explain stuff away in a fictional universe, it's that Bethesda needed to turn that faction of BoS into super good guys. They needed the White Knights/BOS, Black Knights/Enclave, and Orcs/DC variety Super Mutants. That's just the level Bethesda's writing is at. It's not like it would've been impossible to have a story featuring a xenophobic BoS battling the Enclave for Genesis Project magic-terraforming tech, with say, hyper intelligent DC Super Mutants as the most civilized group of the Capital Wasteland.

That's a straw man argument. It also wouldn't have been impossible to have a story about a vault opening up and an army of hybrid human/monkey soldiers overrunning the entire wasteland.

They chose to go with the story they presented. If you didn't like it, that's fine, but again that doesn't somehow mean Bethesda didn't "get" the Brotherhood of Steel.

I find the idea of a subsection of the BoS turning away from their mission perfectly plausible. I just wish they'd done more with the strife between the two factions.

For the record, I didn't particularly think the main quest in FO3 was all that great, I just enjoyed the game for its size and its explorability. I thought the main quest in NV was pretty shit also. Maybe we'll get something good in FO4.

Creston

When you change a faction into the exact opposite of what it used to be, that's a pretty good indication that you don't get what the faction actually represented. To make matters worse, they threw in the Brotherhood Outcasts, with stereotypically black and red armor, as if staying loyal to the original principles and goals of the BoS somehow turned them into Sith.

The problem with FO3's writing as a whole was that it was just nonsensical. So many logic holes and implausibilities. For example, why would anyone build a town around a giant, unexploded nuclear warhead that's leaking radiation? I mean, seriously. Now, if Megaton had been inhabited solely by ghouls (like Gecko in FO2), it would have made sense. Then there's Little Lamplight, where generations of people survived for hundreds of years feeding only on cave fungus. Really? I seriously doubt that there'd be enough cave fungus to sustain a group of people for even a year, letalone generations of people for hundreds of years. Then there was that cannibal town, where a small group of poorly armed cannibals have somehow survived by trapping and eating wasteland wanderers. How exactly does that work when they don't even have guns and there are raiders, mutants, super mutants and killer robots surrounding the town? Don't even get me started on the whole vampire town.

Bethesda's writing consists of coming up with gimmicky ideas and failing to flesh them out or make them logical. Conversely, every character and locale in FNV makes sense. There's a consistent and logical connection between all of them and a real sense of history and belonging within the lore. The more you think about the writing in FNV, the more you appreciate it. The same can't be said for FO3, where the initial novelty of the gimmicks completely breaks down when you stop to think about it.

I didn't say that, although the dated graphics really didn't help. The point is the entire game came across as more of an expansion than a sequel and by the time I'd got to the end of F3 I wasn't really looking for more of the same. Obviously I wasn't the only person that though NV was lacklustre, as the Metacritic score reflects exactly the same thing.

Do you consider ME2 and 3 to be expansions to ME1? How about FO2? Just because a game uses the same engine and core gameplay mechanics as its predecessor doesn't make it an expansion pack. FNV improved and expanded upon FO3 in significant ways (writing, quest structure, faction system, balance, crafting, traits, skills, loot variety and quantity, skill checks, companions, etc). It wasn't just more of the same.

And FNV's metacritic score is 84. That's hardly lackluster. It got docked points primarily for bugginess. FO3 got a higher score because it was a big change from Elder Scrolls and had significantly more hype and marketing than FNV. It was also just as buggy as FNV, yet reviewers tend to overlook bugs in Bethesda's games for whatever reason (see the Metacritic score for Skyrim PS3 which is notoriously broken).

Are you trying to play semantics here? I couldn't give a shit whether NV had more RPG elements than The Witcher 2, as that wasn't the point I was making. The reality is that TW2 was a MUCH better game, with better graphics, better gameplay and a better delivered narrative. After playing it I couldn't go back to such a dated game like NV, especially after burning out on F3. An RPG isn't defined solely by the amount you can shape the character you play but about the gameplay, narrative and all the trimmings. I'd rather play a great game with slightly diluted RPG elements (like Skyrim, TW2, etc) that a derivative game with dated graphics that has more developed RPG elements (like NV).

So it basically boils to presentation. I'm guessing you'd never play FO1 or FO2, given their dated engines. Making meaningful and interesting choices is gameplay and the most important gameplay in an RPG. FNV excels in offering meaningful and interesting choices. Witcher 2 has a lot of interesting choices too, but not as many as FNV. Skyrim doesn't really have any. As with any Bethesda game, the main appeal of Skyrim is exploration and dungeon crawling. If by "gameplay" you actually mean "combat," then yes, the combat in Witcher 2 is better than the combat in FNV. However, the best RPGs make combat just one of many viable ways to play through the game (like in FNV). As for Skyrim, the combat's terrible.

I didn't say that, although the dated graphics really didn't help. The point is the entire game came across as more of an expansion than a sequel and by the time I'd got to the end of F3 I wasn't really looking for more of the same. Obviously I wasn't the only person that though NV was lacklustre, as the Metacritic score reflects exactly the same thing.

Jerykk wrote on Jan 9, 2013, 16:34:FNV is a better RPG than Witcher 2. It is significantly more open-ended, both in terms of quest design and character development.

Are you trying to play semantics here? I couldn't give a shit whether NV had more RPG elements than The Witcher 2, as that wasn't the point I was making. The reality is that TW2 was a MUCH better game, with better graphics, better gameplay and a better delivered narrative. After playing it I couldn't go back to such a dated game like NV, especially after burning out on F3. An RPG isn't defined solely by the amount you can shape the character you play but about the gameplay, narrative and all the trimmings. I'd rather play a great game with slightly diluted RPG elements (like Skyrim, TW2, etc) that a derivative game with dated graphics that has more developed RPG elements (like NV).

Orphic Resonance wrote on Jan 9, 2013, 17:40:sounds like you havent played it much at all.. the game is easily 4x as big as FO3, in terms of quests and npcs and all the interactions between them.. to me FO3 isnt even worthy of the fallout style of RPG, in the way everything is separate from each other and the various areas and npcs dont relate with each other, just exist in some kind of RPG vacuum like a bunch of instances that are only related thematically... FONV and FO3 are very much different in terms of gameplay, and its easily noticeable

You're right, I haven't played that much. Steam lists my play time as three hours. I really enjoyed F3 but NV just didn't engage me, especially not with the other great games around that time. As I said, I didn't like F3's graphics for the time and NV actually seemed worse somehow; the engine simply wasn't very good. The gameplay was still clunky. And that's not to mention all the bugs, like creatures getting stuck in the environment - issues I didn't have with F3. It's the same with STALKER CoP - I'm a HUGE fan of the series but I was so burnt out after the previous content, and other really good games were released in the meantime, that I just couldn't get into it. Everybody says it's the best in the series but I really didn't enjoy it.

I'll give it another go soon but the game just seemed 'off'. It wasn't as enjoyable as games like Dragon Age: Origins, The Witcher 2 or KOTOR.

I thought New Vegas was unquestionably the better game in just about every respect except for bugs. Somehow they managed to make a Bethesda game even buggier. Sometimes I think these things just boil down to what people played first and nostalgia. Neither game will ever be as good as Fallout 2 to me but some kid playing Fallout 2 today would think I'm nuts.

Zyrxil wrote on Jan 9, 2013, 19:31:That misses the point. It's not that you can't explain stuff away in a fictional universe, it's that Bethesda needed to turn that faction of BoS into super good guys. They needed the White Knights/BOS, Black Knights/Enclave, and Orcs/DC variety Super Mutants. That's just the level Bethesda's writing is at. It's not like it would've been impossible to have a story featuring a xenophobic BoS battling the Enclave for Genesis Project magic-terraforming tech, with say, hyper intelligent DC Super Mutants as the most civilized group of the Capital Wasteland.

That's a straw man argument. It also wouldn't have been impossible to have a story about a vault opening up and an army of hybrid human/monkey soldiers overrunning the entire wasteland.

They chose to go with the story they presented. If you didn't like it, that's fine, but again that doesn't somehow mean Bethesda didn't "get" the Brotherhood of Steel.

I find the idea of a subsection of the BoS turning away from their mission perfectly plausible. I just wish they'd done more with the strife between the two factions.

For the record, I didn't particularly think the main quest in FO3 was all that great, I just enjoyed the game for its size and its explorability. I thought the main quest in NV was pretty shit also. Maybe we'll get something good in FO4.